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Uhuh.. Which is why Red Hat is THE number one contributer to the Linux ecosystem, and Novell has tended to be in the top 5, IBM contributes plenty back, and there's a reason I didn't include Cannonical on the list for the time being. What you fail to realize is that people AND corporations taking linux and the free software ecosystem and tweaking it to their needs is what this entire system is based upon. It's completely a system of merit, and the idea that companies can't or should participate inside the meritocracy is stupid, particularly given that we need companies for unfun grunt work.

What you're really failling to understand is that while non-contributing bodies don't add anything to the Ecosystem, they also don't subtract anything. They're a null balance. If they are creating any harm, it is likely to be only to themselves, see Ubuntu's Unity for example. It's a design unlike any other one that's been claimed, actually is chasing after OS X, but thing is, you know what? I don't have to deal with it, because I can use whatever distribution I want, and I won't have to deal with that there as long as I avoid Ubuntu (which I started doing long before unity showed up). Because we are diverse which some might call "fragmented", ultimately if there's something you want or don't want, there's likely a distro for it. For instance want to resolve package dependencies by hand, you can run slackware, to the slackware community what other people are doing with automated package dependency resolution doesn't matter to them, it's what they want to do. So since avg users, and the bigger distros are doing it, and they're not.. everyone else has a null effect on them in terms of packaging, zero, zip, none.

The ultimate point here being if you don't want it you don't have to take it, and it won't effect you other than maybe making the infrastructure better for you.

Gamers bring these extremely useful people called Modders with them, an influx of modders means an influx of people capable of doing coding, art, graphics, sound, etc.. This means this means an influx of people who will not only improve and better our games, but are also likely to improve our infrastructure as well as I outlined in my previous comment.

I don't want to reiterate everything I said above, so I'll just repeat that Linux used to be an OS designed with best interest of USERS in mind. If a corporation gets involved, it's not due to any kind of philanthropic intentions, but with a clear vision of exploiting the infrastructure for their gain. Sometimes the company's direction coincides with what is best for users, sometimes it doesn't. Due to intelligent and suspicious user base, big companies didn't have a lot of chance to subvert the development in their direction (however, there are examples of it, such as Java and Mono making it into the distro repositories). Until now. As Linux's user base expands, the old-hat free software advocates' importance vanishes, and the resistance towards subversion vanishes together with them. Again: just look at what happened to Android.

Bah: Rant!

What do you GPL advocates want?! Linux is for everyone to play with and use. There's no definite timeline of when you should merge changes into mainline kernel. There's nothing that states everything surrounding linux has to be GPL either. I'm happy Valve is investing time on my fav kernel OS, whatever it may be for. It sure won't harm Linux much having another company looking at the Performance issues we currently have with OpenGL and drivers. Steam for Linux is just a less intrusive DRM, it's not SafeDisc or Securom. Some games will be DRM free. Some will use their own, you can avoid those.
I hate when you filth shun away from the word DRM without even acknowledging that Valve needs to use it to be successful in their business. They aren't the Humble Bundle or your Local Open Source Developer for Free company you know. Who said you ever must Install Steam in the first place to run Linux, it's not bundled with it is it?
Sheesh: I for one would love a reason to never boot Windows again, Source Engine is one of those. I've got Calligra-Suite for office work, Blender for 3D, and Renoise to make music in. And all my banking business works through Linux.
Just because some of you seem to hate games, I do not. In fact I've purchased more games ever since I started using this OS.

I don't want to reiterate everything I said above, so I'll just repeat that Linux used to be an OS designed with best intentions of USERS in mind. If a corporation gets involved, it's not due to any kind of philanthropic intentions, but with a clear vision of exploiting the infrastructure for their gain. Sometimes the company's direction coincides with what is best for users, sometimes it doesn't. Due to intelligent and suspicious user base, big companies didn't have a lot of chance to subvert the development in their direction (however, there are examples of it, such as Java and Mono making it into the distro repositories). Until now. As Linux's user base expands, the old-hat free software advocates' importance vanishes, and the resistance towards subversion vanishes together with them. Again: just look at what happened to Android.

Except that open source is not based upon philanthropy it's based upon meritocracy. Outside of a very few circumstances people are doing this because they want to, either because the code benefits them directly, or because they're being paid in some fashion to do it. I'll grant you that there are a few small corner cases where philanthropy shows up, however the driving force is the meritocracy, and people scratching their own itches.

What do you GPL advocates want?! Linux is for everyone to play with and use. There's no definite timeline of when you should merge changes into mainline kernel. There's nothing that states everything surrounding linux has to be GPL either.

I don't care if things are GPL, BSD, Apache, MPL, or ISC. As long as it is free open source software with a license approved by the FSF and OSI.

Originally Posted by dyrvere

Just because some of you seem to hate games, I do not.

I do not hate games. I like games.
I just don't like proprietary closed-source software.
Though, I have no problems with commercial software, as long as its open source.
I am very much willing to pay for games, if they're open source. I just don't want to pay for proprietary games.

Except that open source is not based upon philanthropy it's based upon meritocracy. Outside of a very few circumstances people are doing this because they want to, either because the code benefits them directly, or because they're being paid in some fashion to do it. I'll grant you that there are a few small corner cases where philanthropy shows up, however the driving force is the meritocracy, and people scratching their own itches.

Philanthropy or not, users have fundamentally different goals than companies. Furthermore, different classes of users have different goals, sometimes diametrically different. I want Linux to
1) keep targeting advanced users and not dummies (as targeting both groups was shown many times to be impossible)
2) keep targeting users and not companies (which would love to make my desktop ad-driven hell like Android, or DRM-driven hell like XBox, or, or, or...)

There is quite the furore over Steam allegedly coming to Linux. It's DRM, it's proprietary, but at the same time it will bring more games and therefore more users. This thread alone indicates that the Phoronix community is split over this piece of news. This, in return, makes me hope that the Phoronix community puts more of its weight behind a request asking GOG to add Linux versions of the games they sell. Any complaints and criticisms one may have towards Steam as a Linux user simply do not exist on GOG where DRM is scoffed at along with regional pricing.

Philanthropy or not, users have fundamentally different goals than companies. Furthermore, different classes of users have different goals, sometimes diametrically different. I want Linux to
1) keep targeting advanced users and not dummies (as targeting both groups was shown many times to be impossible)
2) keep targeting users and not companies (which would love to make my desktop ad-driven hell like Android, or DRM-driven hell like XBox, or, or, or...)

Actually it's very possible. Slackware lives alongside PCLinuxOS does it not? And yet these two are as you put it diammetrically opposed. You want something that's going to be for advanced users and never include ads, well.. Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, or some other distro with a large barrier to entry are going to be where you should go. Otherwise you're just stating BS and not willing to eat your own dogfood.

Again this isn't windows or OS X, what we have is a diverse ecosystem with many distributions targeting many different needs that don't really even have to effect oneanother. Choices made in lets just go with Maegia for instance have no effect on Slackware.

Actually it's very possible. Slackware lives alongside PCLinuxOS does it not? And yet these two are as you put it diammetrically opposed. You want something that's going to be for advanced users and never include ads, well.. Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, or some other distro with a large barrier to entry are going to be where you should go. Otherwise you're just stating BS and not willing to eat your own dogfood.

Again this isn't windows or OS X, what we have is a diverse ecosystem with many distributions targeting many different needs that don't really even have to effect oneanother. Choices made in lets just go with Maegia for instance have no effect on Slackware.

I certainly hope you're right, but all my experience with software projects AND my common sense tell me otherwise. Namely, that the big distros will be subverted, receive an inflow of dummies and, ultimately, the corporations will steal the show, namely:
- gaining control over the big infrastructural projects, such as desktop (Unity), browser (Chrome, WebKit), the Office suite (nevermind that it's temporarily divorced from the stupid Oracle, it'll be subverted again by someone smarter soon enough)), etc
- gaining control over distribution process ("Our distro is awesome with BluRay, proprietary codecs, flash and Steam! It has commercial backing and thus uber-fast security updates! Just compare this to your Debian, which hasn't even seen a release in what - a decade?")
- finally, marginalizing the idealistic community into small distro(s) - yeah, just like Gentoo - which doesn't have a choice but to continue using the subverted infrastructure (before it organizes itself enough to start replacing it with free alternatives). It's back to square one at that point.

Well

Originally Posted by kirillkh

I certainly hope you're right, but all my experience with software projects AND my common sense tell me otherwise. Namely, that the big distros will be subverted, receive an inflow of dummies and, ultimately, the corporations will steal the show, namely:
- gaining control over the big infrastructural projects, such as desktop (Unity), browser (Chrome, WebKit), the Office suite (nevermind that it's temporarily divorced from the stupid Oracle, it'll be subverted again by someone smarter soon enough)), etc
- gaining control over distribution process ("Our distro is awesome with BluRay, proprietary codecs, flash and Steam! It has commercial backing and thus uber-fast security updates! Just compare this to your Debian, which hasn't even seen a release in what - a decade?")
- finally, marginalizing the idealistic community into small distro(s) - yeah, just like Gentoo - which doesn't have a choice but to continue using the subverted infrastructure (before it organizes itself enough to start replacing it with free alternatives). It's back to square one at that point.

The beauty of choice! The popular choices will get more users and more attention from companies the niche will have fewer but more devoted users and devs or it will die untill it's either revived or forked. Years later maybe theres no point of forking or reviving the old codebase and it's started from scratch an endless cycle. The most important thing is that the base tools for all the distros we use are open source if we don't like how they do things we can grab a kernel and gnu utils and make our own from the ground up. Bringing in more programs open or closed gives us more building blocks when we start over it's wonderful.